Thursday, July 06, 2006

Weirdness that should be true, maybe...?

There is an odd rumor flying about, nothing more, that Bite Latvija, ahead of its planned fall launch of HSDPA, approached Mikrotīkls (known internationally as Mikrotik), the Latvian maker of wireless internet routers, access points and other equipment, to enquire about the possibility of building HSDPA capable wireless routers.
This would mean that Bite, in addition to planning on selling HSDPA PC cards, and hoping that HSDPA phones and other handsets will come along, is also positioning itself to compete against wireline DSL.
The gadget Bite had in mind would be an access point incorporating a HSDPA chipset (probably from Qualcomm) and a router/hotspot transciever. This would be the sort of thing one could take home or to an office, take out of the box and plug and play. At 2 Mbps to start with, and possibly higher speeds later on (say in the 8 Mbps range), the «nomadic» HSDPA connection would be competitive speed-wise with Lattelecom DSL where it hasn't been speeded up to 10 Mbps yet, as well as in country towns, rural areas, etc. when and if HSDPA coverage is available, but wireline still inadequate.
Building this access device in Latvia would also be a kind of patriotic gesture by Bite (although the price and quality of Mikrotīkls stuff would be decisive).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Mikrotik SOHO router software is quite satisfying - been using in a number of occasions for a couple of years. The price will be that matters.